I was raised a Catholic, My parents, who were never married, separated when I was four. My Mother is not religious though not an Atheist either, she doesn't really speak about things like life after death and such. My father however does pay lip service to Catholicism and attends church weekly. Whilst I was growing up I attended Church every fortnight when we were staying with my Father, this was not a choice of mine but that of my Father. We only spent every other weekend with him and somewhat absurdly he felt attending church was more important than actually doing some fun with us (my brother and I). I always felt angry when I attended church because I felt that the people attending where their mainly for their own selfish purposes, the need to ease the middle/upper class conscience's and reassure their fearful minds that upon death they would be greeted with treasures, pleasures, and all things heavenly. My young mind at the time, though still very much ignorant to the ways of the world, always felt that religion was something of a Contradiction in itself; though ill equipped with knowledge I was not able to articulate and detail my reasons for feeling this as well as I am now.
All in all religion in my mind- and also according to verifiable fact- is one of the greatest killers of our world, both presently, historically, and undoubtedly in the future too...Unless some cataclysmic shift takes place amongst us all, though I'm not optimistic.
I don't want to list myriad reasons for my disgust toward religion and the religious as such an argument would require the pages of a lengthy book, though I would advise reading such books as 'The end of reason' by Sam Harris for a good idea of my personal misgivings toward it.
What I do want to do is express my own feelings on matters of life after death, immortality, heaven,etc,etc.
I am NOT an atheist. To me Atheism is as foolish as blind faith in a man made book purporting to know the ins and outs of any godhead, his mood swings, his wishes, his family, his will,etc,etc...Because whilst religion cannot prove God exists Atheists can no more prove it doesn't.
Personally I would regard myself as Agnostic. I simply do not know and would not be so arrogant or logically deprived as to assert a definite either for or against the existence of God. I would however be bold enough to assert that the Bible, the Koran, and all like it, are simply fairytales by and large, books that do not stand up to close scrutiny and are generally full of contradictions, ignorance, anti-intelligent dogma and poorly written hate speeches....hardly the stuff you expect from an all powerful God. Not to mention clear and provable examples of Plagiarism, disinformation, and outright political motivation.
Furthermore they stifle spiritual development by way of suggesting the answers have been found and forbidding such things as Psychic indulgence, research, and practice, whilst simultaneously using such magical incidents as proof of the existence of divine power. The hypocrisy, of which my last statement is but one example, simply goes against logic, reason and progressive evolution.
Religions are based upon Ideologies which are so logically ridiculous and yet so addictive that the result is they create a planet full of generally good people of reason who toss out all sense of intelligence when it comes to religion for the simple purpose of stifling their fears of death.
And this, above all else, disgusts me. The only reason people believe In the Bible and such fictional books like it is because they offer to subdue mans greatest fear. The fear of death. Something that man simply cannot do anything about, we will ALL die and in order to feel a sense of purpose, allow man's ego to stay inflated, and to help us sleep at night, opportunists of the past created a product for us all. Religion. Which whilst appearing a harmless thing is in actual fact the sole reason why mankind is so divided and so hateful of one another, a clash of ideologies. Your God is fake ours is real. We are therefore God's children you are therefore Satan's spawn. Both sides saying the same thing...or at least thinking it. Add nuclear weapons, the intermarriage of church and state, fundamentalism and the reward of Godly pleasures for killing the unbeliever, and you have a cocktail for complete human annihilation, which is being stirred rigorously by all sides and often is used as tool by leaders claiming to be on our side whilst secretly committing mass murder and blaming it on the other side. An easy thing to do when you invoke God in your speech, people, sadly, are fickle, and the religious are the worst. Their hate dwarfs the hate of the non believer(Agnostic, atheist) because when they see what appears to be a Muslim terrorist attack carried out on Christian territory(or vice versa) they are so easily swayed to believe this premise simple because of their religious delusion. The possibility here for deceit, conspiracy, and outright deception is not only very high but also a reality and a tried and tested technique.
It is time for supposed religious 'liberals' to realize they are just as guilty as the fundamentalists, and time for religion, in its current forms, to be destroyed. I would argue that if God exists he would favour the atheist and the agnostic over the religious. Why? Because the religious seek to paint a picture of a God, give him names, attributes, personalities, traits, rules,etc,etc that they simply have no proof of. The religious, in their backward manner, create both their prison, their torturer and their executioner and by and large ensure that all of us who do not believe, or do not claim to know, are just as shackled as they are in the larger geopolitical sense. The agnostic however does not suggest he knows anything about God and does not carry out murder, rape, genocide or any other such acts of madness in the name of any man made God. The agnostic accepts his ignorance on such matters of divinity and is satisfied with his honesty, is brave enough to admit he knows neither whether God exists or what he wants, and is brave enough to face years of brainwashing that suggest such logical and reasonable thoughts as admitting ones ignorance are sure ways of earning a one way pass to the eternal flames of hell.
A religious person knows that if he were to put his hand in a meat grinder it would be ripped, shredded, and torn to pieces. A non believer knows this too. In every other area of life the religious rely upon evidence and proven fact to go about their daily business. They trust not in faith that were they to put their hand in a meat grinder it would come out unharmed but in knowledge acquired through a basic understanding of science, technology and common bloody sense that if they did put their hand in it would hurt....A LOT. Yet whilst admitting this universe is based upon testable laws of physic's, science and such, and not faith in ridiculous stories and propositions, they simultaneously manage to believe their God expects them to completely disregard logic and reason when it comes to believing in him?!
The sheer stupidity in their thinking is marvelled only by the fact they can't even see how their own logic is in direct confrontation with how they manage their own existence. It would be painfully amusing were it not painfully lethal.
I could go on forever making my argument and I would win simply because I can prove the illogical stupidity of religion and the religious. But I won't because I have better things to do. I will however end this rant on a more positive note.
In my life I have had, and continue to do have, experiences that have no current accepted explanation and appear, for all intents and purposes, to border on the mystic.
I have experienced the feeling of truly leaving the human body and travelling within places I cannot describe in human words. Not dreaming but actual OOBE's(out of body experiences) where I am both awake and travelling free from the confines of the human body. The experience is truly amazing and still science is trying to adequately explain it.....I believe in time they will 'get it', it is only sad that the fear of being labelled a religious crazy has a direct impact on such progress within the scientific community.
Secondly I frequently dream of events that have yet to transpire, I know you are thinking' how can this guy bitch about religion and then come out with such mystic bull'. I can only tell you that I have witnesses to my claims and have proven to others, as well as myself, that the phenomenon of premonition dreaming is a very real ability which I believe every human being is capable of. I do not think it comes from any God but is some ability of the human brain and/or the life force of the universe that allows information from both the past, present and future to be accessed from any time by just about any person. I do not know how to make it happen and I do not simply dream of disasters but ridiculously obscure things that have no real significance to anyone. I have never been able to save anyone as of yet but hope that should my ability improve over time such wonderful things would become possible, nevertheless I do not allow it to inflate my ego too much or ascribe some religious status to my being, I simply claim it is real and a human ability as of yet undiscovered and full understood. In my defence scientific tests have been carried out and a significant body of evidence now exists to back up my claims as many people experience the same thing.
Thirdly I am a receiver of the 11:11 phenomenon of which you can find links and data on other areas of my blog. There exists no theory that I endorse, though many theories exist. I simply do not know if it is just coincidence or something else.
To end this I just want to say that the day man admits how little he knows about the great beyond will be the day we collectively take the largest step toward spiritual understanding, peace on earth, and human evolution. It will be the day that we can finally take our first step toward understanding such things as life after death, extra sensory ability, mysticism and spiritual growth. I hope I live to see that day.
Phil Howe
* As a final note I should mention I no longer consider myself a Christian though in truth I never really was, and never made the personal choice to be folded into such madness anyway. As I child the choice was not my own.
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